AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I made a vow,” I said before I could stop myself, my heartbeat thundering against my ribs. “To my mother—centuries ago. It’s one I’ve never been able to turn away from, no matter how hard I try. She made it so that even if she died, I could never escape it.”
“A vow?” Her arm dropped heavily to her side.
“A binding one, the same kind we shared when I asked you to kill Oberon for me. It’s one of the reasons I released you from it. I didn’t want it to have the same hold over you as mine has over me. It’s made me do things that will haunt me for the rest of my life, and it will continue to make me do things I don’t want to do. That’s why I killed your father, Tessa. I had no other choice.”
“I…” She took a step back, and the wooden blade in her hand tumbled onto the leaves. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I want you to understand,” I said. “I know how it feels for someone to steal a loved one from you. That anger. That hatred. And I know what you must think of me. I don’t expect that to change, but I do want you to understand.”
“Why?” she asked, tipping back her head to gaze up into my eyes. “I tried to kill you. We’re not even friends. We’re enemies.”
“Are we enemies?” I murmured. “Or have we merely misunderstood each other in a very horrible, twisted way?”
“It’s quite the misunderstanding,” she whispered back. “You, showing up in my dream and putting a dagger against my throat. Me, shoving a real blade into your chest, thinking it would turn you into a pile of ash.”
“Except it didn’t.”
“It could have.”
“But itdidn’t.”
For a moment, neither of us even breathed. Her neck bobbed as she swallowed, and my eyes followed the path of the tear that traced a line down her flushed cheek. Heart aching, I stayed my ground, knowing that if I made a move toward her, she’d only push me away.
But then she wrapped a hand around my tunic and tugged me close. “Tell me about this vow.”
I loosed a breath, all too aware of how close her body was to mine. “That’s a long story, one I still don’t fully understand, even now. When I was younger, my mother sailed to the human lands to seek answers about the history of Aesir. She came upon a prophecy that convinced her the gods would soon return to this world. And then she made me vow to stop it from happening, and to kill anyone who brought them back. I’m to look out for a white comet in the sky.”
“A white comet,” she said with a frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She believed it would herald their return, and whoever caused it must die, or else that would be the end of this world. For a long time, I thought the person to do this would be Oberon, but the years have passed, and no comet has come.”
She released her grip on my tunic. “You could be lying to me about this.”
I tucked a finger beneath her chin and leaned toward her. “I swear it on my mother’s memory.”
Suddenly, the dream blinked away, and my quarters back in Dubnos solidified before my eyes. Tessa and the forest were gone. Frowning, I stood from my chair and cracked open the door to see if someone had been calling for me, but there was nothing in the passageway other than the dancing shadows from the torches mounted along the walls.
I shut the door just as I heard her call for me again.
A breath later, I’d returned to her dream. But this time, we stood in the mists just outside of Itchen, the imposing onyx castle a blur of shadows that stretched up toward the hidden stars. Tessa’s hair whipped around her, and she stood shivering in the icy darkness. She frowned as soon as she saw me.
“Where did you go?” she asked. “Why are we here now?”
“I don’t know. The dream stopped for me too.” A shiver crept along the back of my neck. Something was wrong. “And I didn’t choose to come here. You must have.”
She shook her head, jaw tensing. “This is the last place I’d want to be.”
“Take my hand,” I shouted into the wind. We needed to go somewhere else. It would be too difficult to continue our conversation here. “Let’s go back to—”
My voice cut off as soon as I saw him. Brown hair whipped around a lined face pockmarked with bloodshot eyes and a cluster of burns along his right cheek. He raced through the mists toward the onyx castle, his tattered boots slipping on the sand. Cold plunged through my body, as if I’d suddenly been dunked into a frozen lake while the ice closed in over my head. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. Until I remembered that Tessawas standing right there.
I moved in front of her, but it was far too late. She’d spotted him.
She took two slow steps before breaking out into a run. “Father!”
“No.” I snatched her arms and hauled her back. “You don’t want to see this.”
“Let go of me.” She struggled against me. I closed my eyes and turned her away from the sight. I needed to stop this. I had to gain control of this dream, but the core of my power seemed to slip through my fingers, like the sand that billowed around us. “Kalen, stop!”
